Is 2018 the year shipping technology becomes self-aware?

Our predictions for what technologies the shipping and logistics industry will be focusing on in the coming year.

There’s a sentiment in the shipping and logistics industry that’s uttered so often it has almost been accepted as fact through sheer repetition: the industry doesn’t adopt technology as fast as other industries and thus lags behind in numerous areas like automation and analytics.
As with any sentiment as trite as this, there’s some truth to the idea that those involved with shipping have not adopted modern technology as aggressively as in other industries. But there’s also a whole lot this viewpoint fails to recognize.
And it is in this space that the shipping industry finds itself as 2017 ends. Weighed down by some unwieldy systems and processes, but also looking wide-eyed at the future. Let it be known that this past year was one in which awareness of cutting edge technology and the impact it could have on shipping was fully realized.
Shipping lines started technology-focused venture capital funds. Traditional freight forwarders launched digital-only transaction portals. Designs for autonomous trucks and containerships were unveiled.
That’s the stuff of promotional press releases. But below the surface, we’ve seen shippers migrate to truly automated procurement and transportation platforms, forwarders using artificial intelligence providers to analyze and predict customer behavior, port authorities engaging with visibility providers to help speed container flow across their yards.
We’ve seen logistics conferences where technology is not only part of the agenda, but where it dominates the conversation. Technology in shipping is no longer the grease that smooths the gears, it’s the gears themselves.
So let’s look ahead to what 2018 may portend. Here are my top five predictions for what technologies and trends will monopolize the industry’s attention in the year ahead:

Blockchain. So misunderstood, yet so intriguing.
The momentum in the second half of 2017 around blockchain and its potential to impact everything from documentation collection to supply chain finance will only gather steam as more folks get their heads around what it could mean.
What’s important here is to not focus on the plumbing. Blockchain is a fancy way of a describing a decentralized, encrypted ledger. You don’t need to know how it works. Just focus on what it can do.

Mergers And Acquisitions. I’ve written recently about there being too many new logistics tech startups. I say this not because all the innovation behind these startups isn’t useful, but because the industry will get overwhelmed by too many new names and disruptive models all being pitched to them at the same time.
In light of that, I do believe we’ll see some established companies – shippers, forwarders, NVOs, maybe even carriers – acquire some of these startups that have promising technology, but haven’t figured out the market fit for their innovations.

Social Goes Commercial. I really believe that the amount of information being batted back and forth across social media platforms these days will lead to a transformation of the way commerce is conducted.
As of now, companies have barely scratched the surface in terms of mining publicly available social media data and turning it into insights. The companies that get ahead of this from a demand perspective (and then secondarily, from a logistics perspective), will be light years in front of companies that wait for this second wave of the data revolution to hit them before responding.

An Eye On APIs. I’ve been hammering away at the idea that application programming interfaces (APIs) are the path forward in logistics transactions. And judging from conversations I had in the second half of the year, APIs are finally starting to get traction in international freight.
It’s not just about replacing legacy EDI communication methods. It’s about how modern, mobile-first, commercial systems are utterly dependent on APIs to pull data from disparate sources and send that information back out to the appropriate parties. If you still don’t know what APIs are and how they fit into freight movement, now’s a good time to get started.

Rise Of The E-commerce Shipper. Service providers, carriers, and even trade publications have historically focused on high-volume shippers, and for good reason. They represent an outsized percentage of cargo volume, and they are often the innovators and bellwethers of the industry at large.
But consumer buying habits are changing, and it would behoove logistics practitioners to keep an eye on what small, cross-border e-commerce companies are doing. Technology and logistics companies surely have been paying attention to this enterprising crop of shippers.
It’s been said that small shippers are the long tail in the industry, but the long tail is now starting to wag the dog.